Coinbase hires Eric Scro, previously head of finance at the NYSE, as its VP of Finance
Frank Chaparro / Business Insider :
Context & Ripple Effects
This hire is one move in a deliberate bench-building campaign: within months of each other in early 2018, Coinbase pulled Tina Bhatnagar from Twitter for operations and technology and Emilie Choi from LinkedIn, where she ran M&A through 40+ deals, while David Marcus joined its board from Facebook and PayPal. Bringing in Eric Scro from the NYSE extends the same pattern into the finance function itself.
First-order effects
- Coinbase's finance operation is now led by someone who ran finance at an incumbent exchange operator, giving it direct institutional-market credibility at the CFO-track level rather than just advisory relationships.
Second-order effects
- Rival exchanges competing for institutional flows now face a talent war against a company paying in equity upside plus traditional-executive prestige, raising the price of Wall Street-grade leadership across the sector.
Third-order effects
- If the hiring pattern holds — Fannie Mae's Brian Brooks followed later in 2018 as chief legal officer — crypto exchanges are structurally absorbing traditional finance and regulatory talent, pre-building the compliance and reporting apparatus institutional capital will demand before allocating at scale.
The trend: Crypto exchanges are staffing up with executives from incumbent financial institutions to close the legitimacy gap with Wall Street ahead of institutional capital arriving.